CRMs were revolutionary when customer relationships mostly meant knowing someone’s last purchase and sending a holiday postcard. They were designed to help sales teams organize contacts, remember follow-ups, and store account information in one place.
But today’s customers don’t want to be “managed.” They expect to be recognized, valued, and involved. A CRM that simply stores email addresses and sales notes doesn’t meet those expectations anymore. It’s a relic of a time when brands could dictate the conversation. Now, customers are the ones leading it.
A CRM is great at telling you that Lisa from Denver opened your last newsletter. What it can't tell you is whether Lisa feels connected to your brand, shares your values, or would advocate for you. And in today’s competitive markets, those deeper connections are what separate a loyal customer from a one-time buyer.
In working with mid-sized and enterprise-level brands, I've seen a growing realization: storing information isn’t the same as building relationships.
Customer engagement platforms are built around participation, not observation. They create continuous opportunities for customers to interact with a brand, beyond transactions. These interactions could range from joining a cause the brand supports, participating in exclusive experiences, attending events, completing challenges, or earning meaningful rewards.
In one project I consulted on, a national outdoor gear company started using an engagement platform to organize monthly challenges encouraging sustainable practices like trail cleanups. Their email open rates barely changed, but their customer advocacy numbers skyrocketed. More customers started mentioning the brand organically on social media, writing positive reviews, and referring friends—all behaviors their CRM alone had never been able to inspire.
That’s the biggest difference: engagement platforms focus on creating behaviors, not just recording activity.
The original design of most CRM systems assumes that communication flows from the brand to the customer. Automated emails, promotional messages, event invitations—they all start from the company’s side.
Real engagement is two-way. It gives customers agency. It lets them choose how to interact, contribute, and advocate. Engagement platforms make it easy to invite customers into the brand story, not just observe it from a distance.
A CRM can tell you which customers clicked on your last sales email. It cannot create a community event where customers meet, connect, and build memories linked to your brand. That’s where engagement platforms win: by turning passive audiences into active participants.
Another growing pain with CRMs is their rigidity. Many were built long before mobile apps, social commerce, and real-time customer feedback loops were daily realities.
Trying to bolt modern engagement tools onto a traditional CRM often feels like duct-taping a smartphone to a rotary phone. It’s clunky and inefficient.
Modern engagement platforms are designed to integrate easily with social channels, sustainability trackers, ecommerce platforms, and loyalty apps. Rediem, for example, offers integrations that allow brands to track not just purchases, but meaningful actions like event attendance, volunteering, or content sharing—then reward those behaviors without requiring massive backend customization.
Brands today don’t have months to spend customizing clunky systems. They need tools that fit into the fast-paced, customer-driven world they operate in.
There’s a temptation to think of engagement in terms of attention metrics: email open rates, social media likes, ad impressions. But attention is fleeting. It doesn’t build loyalty.
Real engagement is about action. It’s about customers doing something—joining a program, advocating publicly, contributing to a shared mission. Actions create emotional investment. Emotional investment leads to true loyalty.
In the early days of ecommerce, it was enough to get customers to notice you. Now, every brand is vying for attention. The ones that succeed are the ones that turn that attention into meaningful, ongoing participation.
CRMs weren’t built to inspire action. Engagement platforms are.
Loyalty used to mean a card swipe or a points tally. But many customers today don’t care about stacking up points they’ll never use. They care about being part of something bigger.
Brands that understand this shift are moving away from transactional loyalty and toward value-based loyalty. real-time customer, participate in events, share feedback, and become part of a community.
Engagement platforms provide the tools to make this shift operational. They allow brands to design loyalty programs based not just on purchases, but on meaningful contributions—like volunteering time, attending educational webinars, promoting sustainability, or supporting local communities.
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When customers feel that their actions matter and are recognized, loyalty becomes natural. It’s not something you have to incentivize heavily with endless discounts. It’s something that grows out of shared values and authentic connection.
It’s important to be realistic: CRMs aren’t going to disappear. Brands still need systems to manage customer data, track communications, and support internal sales processes.
But the idea that a CRM can be the heart of your customer strategy is increasingly outdated. CRMs are tools for record-keeping. They’re necessary—but not sufficient—for building modern customer relationships.
Engagement platforms are stepping into that center-stage role. They’re where relationships are built, nurtured, and grown over time. CRMs may still sit quietly in the background, keeping everything organized. But the emotional, human side of customer loyalty? That belongs to engagement platforms now.
In today’s saturated markets, it’s not enough to collect customer data or bombard inboxes with offers. Brands that succeed are the ones that invite customers to act—on their interests, on shared values, on their connection to the brand community.
CRMs helped brands grow by keeping track of customers. Engagement platforms help brands grow by giving customers a reason to stay involved.
If your loyalty strategy still relies mainly on a CRM, it’s time to ask hard questions. Are you building a database—or a community? Are you pushing messages—or inviting participation?
The brands that will thrive in the years ahead aren’t the ones with the biggest databases. They’re the ones with the most engaged communities.
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